The Trip In

The new Tern crew loaded up -- along with SeeMore satellite technicians Konrad Schaad and Ralph Blancato, and Tern special volunteers Kathy Kawakami and Barbara Mayer -- on December 1st, for the three day trip out to French Frigate Shoals.

Women to Tern Island:  Morgan Gilmour, Sarah Youngren, Barbara Mayer, Dakshina Marlier, and Kathy Kawakami onboard the ship Kahana en route to French Frigate Shoals.

The first day at sea was pretty shaky, or at least most of the crew was. Things calmed down (both weatherwise and physically) after that, though. All of us enjoyed some great food onboard the ship Kahana, and some nice home-made music in the evening, courtesy of the Kahana's Nalu and our own volunteers.

A quiet moment as La Perouse comes into view. 

We arrived at Tern on Sunday, with a speedy offload due to good weather.   Come along on one of the small boat transfers from the good ship Kahana to the Island--



So much has changed since this summer!!!!  The crew on-island has built a tremendous amount of artificial habitat, experimenting with different materials and styles to see what the birds will accept for nesting.

Mōlī (above) and ka'upu nesting in runway.  Since some vegetation has returned to the runway, albatross are enjoying the extra room to nest.

The island is also green with winter.  As some vegetation starts to fill in the runway, both black-footed and Laysan albatross are moving nests into the green parts.  This will greatly expand their nesting area by about 30% -- a significant enlargement on one of two islands in the atoll that do not get washed over regularly.  The habitat is also important in that French Frigate Shoals is not as readily damaged by tsunami and storm waves as some other important seabird locations, such as Kure, Midway and Laysan, so provides an important refugia.

Albatross Love.  Photo by Ralph Blancato.

Manager Meg Duhr Schultz shows the crew around, and fills them in on all the rules.  We live happily on Tern Island -- but must always respect that this is the home of the wildlife first!

Manager Meg drills the troops (Dan Rapp, Dakshina Marlier, Barbara Mayer, and Abram Fleishman, L>R).

Meg leads the first entrapment walk -- All folks must participate in orientation when they arrive.  (Morgan Gilmour, Dakshina Marlier, Abram Fleishman, Meg Duhr Schultz)

Sarah Youngren and Abram Fleishman work on setting up acoustics equipment for monitoring seabirds at night.  Sarah is working with UCSC's Matthew McKown and Nexleaf in this first-ever deployment of this remote monitoring system totally-off-the-grid (as in no cell phone even).  This project is pretty exciting because if it works well, we can use it to monitor nocturnally active seabirds without tromping through their burrows.  It could also be used in remote places like Nihoa and other uninhabited islands, without people staying there.

Konrad Schaad repairing our satellite system....Yeesh!!!  We have him to thank for this blog being posted -- and for use of our turtle cam and email systems!

We also had our first off-island experience of the season, counting seabirds, seals and turtle while Konrad and Ralph worked on the turtle cam (East Island).  We were happy to see a whole lot of nesting albatross, as well as a lot of mostly healthy looking seals. 

First 'a maka'ele (masked booby) eggs of the season!!!  Photo by Sarah Youngren.

A juvenile 'iwa (great frigatebird) inspects Konrad's work at the top of a telephone pole.  Konrad is fixing the cameras used by sea turtle researcher George Balaz for monitoring East Island -- where roughly half of the entire species nests!  Konrad is a tall man:  check out how this young frigatebird's wingspan dwarfs him in perspective.  Photo by Ralph Blancato.

Silver bellied 'ilio o ke kai (Hawaiian monk seal) juvenile.  Photo by Paula Hartzell. 

We expect the Kahana to return from its trip up to Midway around December 13th.  We will have more bird and seal news coming all winter!

A mother-daughter team on Tern:  Kathy Kawakami and Erin Kawakami tackle native plant propagation on Tern Island.  We appreciate Kathy's experience and Erin's energy -- and the willingness of all our volunteers to give their time for wildlife conservation at this remote location.